Patti Smith is my favourite female artist. Singer, song writer, poet, photographer and icon, she has had a remarkable creative career. A published poet and nearly 30 years old before she made her recorded debut in 1974 with the groundbreaking Hey Joe/ Piss Factory funded by then lover Robert Mapplethorpe that melded music and poetry into a new hybrid . She was the first of the New York underground punk scene to be signed to a major record label and released her remarkable art punk Horses album debut the following year that featured high levels of improvisation and confrontation, artiness and amateurism that set a benchmark for generations of female performers to emulate and be inspired by.

Due to injury, marriage and child birth, personal heartbreak and crisis Patti Smith has intermittingly disappeared from public view for over 16 years of her career only to return with deeper understanding and renewed creativity and commitment.

In case you too are a fan and will need to budget and plan travel accordingly, Patti will be involved in this year's Melbourne International Arts Festival in October. She will be participating in many different ways during the course of the event, including live musical performances, a collaboration with composer Phillip Glass on their mutual friend poet Allen Ginsberg, Glass will also be presenting a piece based on the writings of Leonard Cohen, theDream Of Life film documentary on her life and work, an exhibition of photographs and objects inspired by the movie and her own installation and exhibition of her photography and personal artefacts. It sounds very exciting and a great multi-faceted way to interact with a remarkable contemporary creative artist.

As a bonus, Paul Miller, aka DJ Spooky That Subliminal Kid, the most intellectual and multi- tasking of his guild, will also be involved in the festival. Producer, DJ, theoretician, conceptual artist, author of two books on sound, I'm currently reading his fascinating second, Sound Unbound and listening to the accompanying CD, more on that another time. He will be performing live as well as presenting a large scale multi-media installation based on a visit and recordings he made of the Antarctic, Terra Nova Sinfonia Antarctica.

In an era where CD lyric booklets are unreadably small or non-existent and absent from downloads, mondegreens or the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase such as a line in a poem or a lyric in a song have become increasingly common. Although they are nothing new, they date back since music and lyrics began, as a matter of fact in 1964 the FBI investigated the lyrics of Louie Louie on the grounds that they were possibly obscene but concluded that they couldn't be deciphered so no charges were laid.

Recently a hearing aid company Amplifon conducted a survey on the most misheard lyrics, surprisingly The Beatles appeared twice, their enunciation is usually very clear while Sting also appeared twice once with his band and topped the survey solo. Last year he was voted the worst lyricist in history, by readers of a U.S. music magazine, for 'mountainous pomposity and cloying spirituality' and his use of 'ham-handed metaphors''.He was singled out for rhyming the word 'cough' with 'Nabokov', and for De Do Do Do De Da Da Da.

Here are the results of the survey.

The National Year Of Reading also came up with their list of the most misquoted and misheard song lyrics.

1. Madonna, Like A Virgin. "Touched for the 33rd time." (Real lyric: "Touched for the very first time.")

Interest in and the humour of misheard lyrics has become so widespread that there are a number of websites that catalogue and encourage the mangling of song lyrics like Kiss This Guy where that mangled Hendrix lyric and John Fogerty's "There's A Bathroom On The Right" ( from Bad Moon Rising) top the polls as the all time greats. Apparently Jimi and John were aware of their misheard lyrics and occassionally actually used them in concert.

But what about Australian mondogreens? Surely with our nasal twang mouth mumble we should almost top the world. Spiderbait recognised it and gave us Alex The Seal and we do have James Reyne and Peter Garrett trying their hardest while AC DC gave the world "Thirty thieves and thunder chief"

So let's start an Australian list of mondegreens. Your nominations please.

So the 50 year old "Modfather" Paul Weller has just finished his sold out Australian tour of intimate venues, his first visit for 23 years. My show surrogates reported that he was energetic and leaner and more hirsute than most of his audience, played a 25 song set, perhaps with a little too much jamming ( no pun intended) in the instrumental sections. Paul played four Jam songs, three hits and one obscurity, one Style Council track and a Beatle cover, the rest of the set made up of material from his solo albums including seven tracks from his most recent 22 Dreams album. Understandably the audience apparently reacted most to the familiar material and were at least polite to the less familiar, although his recent albums have often charted in the UK, in Australia in recent years he has not been a big record seller.

It's an interesting choice that veteran performers have to make when preparing a set list. Do you play what your audience want to hear or what you want to play? The newer material that you are most excited by or the more familiar material that will most excite the audience? There is a commercial consideration too. Do you push the "new" album or collection in the set so that the audience will leave the gig excited and traipse into the record shop the next day to purchase what you are pushing rather than just dig out the oldies that they already own?

So what are your expectations when you go along to see your favourites in concert? Did Weller get the ratio of old and new material about right? For many Australians it was their once in a lifetime chance to witness their musical hero in the flesh as opposed to a regular opportunity in the UK, so does that change the situation? Do you demand the hits? How do you feel about the new unfamiliar material being played at the expense of the old live?

Spoken word performances can be pretentious, poetic, comedic, tragic, the tirades of Jello Biafra, the mouth marathons of Henry Rollins, but I often enjoy those discs that walk the fine line between talk and song, the length and charm of a pop song spoken rather than sung.Often more verbally dense than a standard pop song, the ideas and content can be more concentrated, the accent, pronunciation and breath pattern communicating the personality of the purveyor, the subtle nuance of the human voice liberated from the dictatorship of the song.Surprisingly many such discs have become popular hits, digging into people's brains just like a sung pop song would. Here's a few of my favourites.

So the dinner party had morphed into a drinking party and we started delving into the old vinyl for some dag classics and I pulled out Gary Glitter's Greatest Hits, but before I could put on Rock And Roll Parts One and Two, someone said "Oh I can't listen to that! He's a disgusting child molester!" "But it's a great track!" I responded. "Ugh he's such a creep" was the response. "He's done his time and out of jail." I said. "I don't care he's a creep!" "The track was recorded 30 years ago, long before his recent crimes" I responded before returning it to the rack and digging out another classic.

It was an interesting interchange and got me thinking about how a musician's non-musical behaviour can sometimes negatively affect a listener's enjoyment of their music. Certainly Gary's behaviour has alienated many fans and I imagine that his material would not be appearing on many "hits and memories" radio station play-lists as a result. Although in spite of the recent controversies, court cases, rumour and innuendo, Michael Jackson's Thriller 25 album, released earlier this year sold three million copies in the first 12 weeks of its release, peaking at number one in eight countries and Europe. It reached at number two in the United States, number three in the United Kingdom and made the top ten in over thirty national charts. It has been certified gold in eleven countries, including the UK.

As a result of Pete Townshend visiting a kiddie porn site and using his credit card, for research he claimed, he was investigated by police for months but not charged but still placed on a UK register of sex offenders for five years and had to submit DNA, mug shot and fingerprints with seemingly little detriment to his or The Who's reputation or career.

Although he was never charged, Ike Turner's reputation and career were severely damaged by Tina Turner's well-publicised allegations of spousal abuse and he spent several years in jail for drug offences in the nineties. His career rehabilitation was due to be boosted by The Black Keys who wrote an album's worth of songs for Ike and intended to produce the album for him but he died before it could happen. The duo recorded the album themselves and released it as Attack and Release earlier this year.

It's not only recent fracas that have negatively affected performers' careers. In 1966 John Lennon's comment about The Beatles being "more popular than God" created a storm in a communion cup across America's Bible-belt. I wonder if those who attended rallies and burnt their Beatle records then still boycott the Fab Four's material? Back in 1958, when news broke that Jerry Lee Lewis' cousin bride was supposedly 15 years old (she was actually 13), not unusual in the American south, it caused such a backlash that it irreparably damaged The Killer's career which never fully recovered. More recently Phil Spector's murder trial, not to mention his follicle transgressions may have permanently besmirched his legendary status in musical history.

Does heinous personal behaviour or racist (Bowie and Clapton's outbursts resulted in Rock Against Racism's formation in 1976), anti-Semitic, sexist or homophobic comments by musicians interfere with your ability to enjoy their music as a result? Is it retrospective? If a performer transgresses later in life does it limit your enjoyment of their music even if it was created years before?

In previous centuries little was known about the lives of artists, their work was viewed independent of its creator, as a matter of fact they were seen as irrelevant, mere conduit or receivers of God's grace and inspiration. Of course in the age of information-overkill the public and private lives of people like musicians are on open display for good and for ill.

Isaac Hayes passed away this week and although it was noted in the media with reference to Shaft,of course, and his later involvement with South Park his musical influence in the 1960s and 70s can't be over estimated. His multi-instrumental and songwriting talents on the Stax record label led to him playing with Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, Albert King, Eddie Floyd, Rufus Thomas amongst other greats and with Dave Porter, he wrote over 200 songs that were hits for other soul greats. His 1967 solo album Hot Buttered Soul was his commercial breakthrough and led to even more successes and Academy Award winning soundtrack work in the 70s.He released over 20 albums under his own name.

I was crossing the road in my usual morning daze the other day and happened to glance at the window of my local neighbourhood sex shop that is usually filled with amusing things like vinyl nurse outfits and the occasional inflatable sheep (!) and my attention was grabbed by this poster. It was a real "what the?" moment and I had to look closer to find out what a poster of my favourite musician was doing in such an emporium, hopefully no Google street-view camera was preserving the moment for posterity! What was a great, dead-for-38-years musician in his full psychedelic glory doing in such a tawdry context, surely it must be a mistake! But no it wasn't, it was an ad for a sex tape featuring Jimi that has evidently just surfaced.

So I scuttled home and googled to find out what was going on. Apparently a company that deals in celebrity porn has just obtained and released a brief tape that purports to be Jimi having sex with two women. Jimi's family estate had attempted to block its release and declared it a fake but evidently had not been able to prevent its public availability. The company has dredged up comments by groupie matrons like Pamela Des Barres and Cynthia Plastercaster who had preserved Jimi's penis in plaster as Penis De Milo 40 years ago and therefore should recognise it again, both vouching for the fact that it was indeed Jimi in the tape. Ah, they don't make groupies like that any more. Do they even exist in today's post-Aids world?

No I haven't downloaded or bought the tape, after all I've seen and heard Jimi on video and record make musical love to his guitar in a way that far transcends the mere physical act, besides I've never felt sex was a spectator sport. But obviously there will be those who will lay their money down to satisfy their curiosity or prurient interest.
We are used to the likes of Tommy Lee and Pamela, Vince Neal (!) and of course Paris getting their 15 minutes of fame and naughty notoriety, but what about a musical immortal genius like Jimi? Will his fans care about his carnal capers? Would you be bothered?

Certainly an unexpected musical relic from Jimi's past that I am looking forward to checking out is an album's worth of material recently unearthed by Graham Nash from Steve Still's archives. Jimi and Steve were close friends, Jimi appeared on a track on Stills' underrated debut solo album and apparently they jammed and collaborated with the tape running more than we realised, some of which has leaked out as bootlegs, but it will be great to here more musical moments from their musical meld. Now we just have to get John McLaughlin to okay the release of the tapes of he and Jimi jamming that almost made their way out to the public on the Nine To The Universe album in 1980.

"You listen to these modern records, they're atrocious, they have sound all over them. There's no definition of nothing, no vocal, no nothing, just like -- static." Bob Dylan
.
Have you noticed that you are listening to new music less and enjoying it less? You get out the latest CD or iTunes download by your new favourite band, but strangely enough although you may like the songs, you don't really listen to it for very long. You skip tracks, you take it off, put it on again but there's something wrong that you just can't quite put your finger on. There's not that magical click in that part of your brain that enjoys music. It's like bad sex, you're doing it but it's just doing it for you. Why? I'm no sound expert (obviously), but I decided to do some research and find out why. Here's what I found.

For the past 10 or so years, artists and record companies have been increasing the overall loudness of pop and rock albums, using ever increasing degrees of compression during mastering, altering the properties of the music being recorded. Compression means squeezing the dynamic range of an audio signal, usually to boost the perceived volume of a song or performance. Compression works on recorded music the way MSG works on food; it makes everything sound stronger. MP3 players such as iPods have their own compressors and limiters, further reducing the dynamic range of recordings, as do computers. A CD doesn't have to be mastered loud; the iPod can make it as loud as everything else it plays. Quiet sounds and loud sounds are now squashed together, decreasing the recording's dynamic range, raising the average loudness as much as possible, while the sound peaks (which would be too loud) have just been chopped off. When a soundwave squares off, something called "clipping" can occur, in the digital realm it means digital distortion, which is quite an unpleasant, static-like sound. Some players just won't play that frequency, resulting in loss of dynamic range, where you're literally not hearing the whole song.

"The human ear responds to the average sound across a piece of music rather than peaks and crescendos.The inner ear automatically compresses blasts of high volume to protect itself, so we associate compression with loudness", Daniel Levitin, a professor of music and neuroscience at McGill University and author of This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession says that human brains have evolved to pay particular attention to loud noises, so compressed sounds initially seem more exciting. "But the effect doesn't last. The excitement in music comes from variation in rhythm, timbre, pitch and loudness. If you hold one of those constant, it can seem monotonous." After a few minutes, research shows, constant loudness grows fatiguing to the brain. Though few listeners realize this consciously, many simply feel an urge to skip to another song."

There used to be literal physical limitations to this process when vinyl was the primary recording medium -- the music's dynamic range was naturally restricted by the medium itself. During mastering, you could only compress so far; if the sounds were too extreme, the needle would pop out of the groove. It's not necessarily that vinyl sounds better, it's just that it's impossible for vinyl to be fatiguing. The LP could hold about 50 minutes of sound (25 minutes a side) if you really squashed the grooves together. As a result, most albums came in at about 40 to 45 minutes. The Beatles lobbied their record company, to get their records pressed on thicker vinyl so they could achieve a bigger bass sound.

With the advent of compact disc technology in the early 1980s, almost all of this went out the window, as CDs lacked the physical limitations of vinyl. CDs can hold about 80 minutes of sound, and artists have filled them up; the majority of major label pop CDs are an hour or more.

In theory, this was a good thing. The dynamic range of CDs was far larger than vinyl, and could closer replicate the highs and lows of actual performance. But something else happened. The saturation level for a sound signal is digital full scale, or 0dB. In the 1980s, the average sound level of a track was -18dB. The arrival of digital technology allowed engineers to push finished tracks closer to the loudest possible, 0dB. Now, modern CDs average at around minus 12 to minus 9 dB.

While the increase in CD loudness was gradual throughout the 1990s, some opted to push the format to the limit, such as on Oasis' What's The Story Morning Glory which reached -8 dBFS RMS on many of its tracks, a rare occurrence, especially in 1995. In 1997, Iggy Pop assisted in the remix and remaster of his 1973 Raw Power album, creating an album which, to this day, is arguably the loudest rock CD ever recorded. It has an RMS of -4 dBFS RMS in places, which is rare even by today's standards, though getting more and more common. The Red Hot Chili Peppers' Californication, branded "unlistenable" by studio experts, is the subject of an online petition calling for it to be "remastered" without its harsh, compressed sound. It clips constantly, and the title track peaks at a whopping minus 5.6 dB.

And it's not just new music, The new Led Zeppelin collection, Mothership, is louder than the band's original albums, while Elvis Presley's 30 #1 Hits was mastered too loud, so that it is competitive with things like the new Foo Fighters record.